9. This brings us to a consideration of the spindle, which, according
to the ancients, is turned by the Fates, and by which Plato
signifies[224] that which, in the evolution of the world, moves, and
that which is immovable. According to (Plato), it is the Fates, and
their mother Necessity, which turn this spindle, and which impress it
with a rotary motion in the generation of each being. It is by this
motion that begotten beings arrive at generation. In the Timaeus[225]
the (Intelligence, or) divinity which has created the universe gives
the (immortal) principle of the soul, (the reasonable soul), and the
deities which revolve in the heaven add (to the immortal principle of
the soul) the violent passions which subject us to Necessity, namely,
angers, desires, sufferings, and pleasures; in short, they furnish us
with that other kind of soul (the animal nature, or vegetable soul)
from which they derive these passions. Plato thus seems to subject us
to the stars, by hinting that we receive from them our souls,[227]
subordinating to the sway of Necessity when we descend here below,
both ourselves and our morals, and through these, the "actions" and
"passions"[228] which are derived from the passional habit[215] of the
soul (the animal nature).[229]